Hesperus; or, Forty-Five Dog-Post-Days: A Biography. Vol. I.Jean Paul
General
Hesperus; or, Forty-Five Dog-Post-Days: A Biography. Vol. I.
Jean Paul
Fiction
The sect of the 4th of May could measure itself with its rival, for it
also made out a college of three members. Its adherents were Appel
(Apollonia, the youngest daughter), who acted as cook, and whose
culinary reputation and certificate of good bakery would suffer by it,
if the guest should come before the bread rose; she could well
conceive what a soul must feel who should stand before a guest with
her hands full of skewers and needles, beside the flat-iron of the
window-curtains, and without having even the _frisure_ of her hat, or
of the head which was to be under it, so much as half ready. The second
adherent of this sect, who ought to have had most to say against
Tuesday,--although he said least, because he could not talk and
had only recently been baptized,--was to be carried to church on
Friday for the first time; this adherent was the godchild of the
guest. The Chaplain knew, to be sure, that the moon sent round her
godfather-bidder, Father Riccioli,[11] among the _savans_ of earth, and
got them into the church-book of heaven as godfathers to her spots; but
he thought it was better for him to take a godfather within a
circumference of not more than fifty miles. The Apostles'-day of the
churching and the Festival-day of the arrival of the distinguished
godfather would then have beautifully coincided; but now the plaguy
fine weather was bringing godfather along four days too soon!
The third disciple of Friday was, at bottom, the heresiarch of this
party, the Court-Chaplain himself: the parsonage wherein Horion was to
have his temporary court residence was all full of rats,--a regular
ball-room and _plaza de armas_ of the same,--and of these the Chaplain
wanted first of all to clear his house. Few court-chaplains, with
hectic in their bodies and rats in their houses, ever made so much
stench on that account as did this one in St. Luna against the beasts.
It would have taken very few clouds of it to smoke all the court-dames
out of Europe. Did not our hectic patient burn as much of the hoof of
his nag as he had sawed off from it? Didn't he even take one of the
sharp-toothed creatures themselves prisoner, and smear him with
gudgeon-grease and train-oil, and then let the arrested subject go,
that he might as a pariah trot up and down through the holes, and
constrain by his ointment rats of higher caste to emigrate? Did he not
go to work by the wholesale, and actually take a buck to board, of
which he wanted nothing except that he should stink and displease the
tailed monks? And were not all these remedies as good as useless?...
For the deuse take rats and Jesuits! Meanwhile, I will at least offer
people here on the very third page the moral, that against both of
these pests, as against toothache, mental troubles, and fleas, there
are a thousand excellent recipes which have no effect.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account